


i was solid gold

by couldaughter



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Established Relationship, Getting Together, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Memory Alteration, POV Eddie Kaspbrak, Reunions, except there are only 4 things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:07:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23333608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/couldaughter/pseuds/couldaughter
Summary: “Fuck,” said Eddie, eloquently.“Not unless you buy me dinner first,” said the other guy. He looked shell shocked, and not in a good way. His eyes were kind of glazed over, his hands beset with tiny tremors that shook out up to his shoulders.(four places eddie saw richie before derry, and one after)
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Myra Kaspbrak, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 11
Kudos: 86





	1. Chapter 1

**1995**

Being a college freshman didn’t change any Kaspbrak household customs.

“Hey, mommy,” Eddie called, stuck headfirst in a moving box full of VHS tapes. “D’you remember what was on any of these?”

“No, darling, I don’t,” said Sonia, from her seat on the couch. It was winter break, so Eddie was back home for a couple weeks, and Sonia had seized the opportunity and made him haul several boxes of crap down from the attic to sort out.

Christmas wasn’t going to be big, that year. She’d finally fought it out with the last of her sisters that would talk to her. She’d never talk to her again, but the sister would come to the funeral, dry-eyed and solemn about it all.

For now, though, Sonia Kaspbrak was alive and perfectly happy watching Days of Our Lives on the TV in the lounge.

“Could I maybe check them in the player?” Eddie asked, tentatively. One of them had caught his eye, labelled only with a date — his sixth birthday, an event which he could barely remember. Pulling it out left a cloud of dust in its wake, like a portent of asthma attacks to come. He stumbled back quickly and turned away, taking shallow breaths.

“No, no, there’s no need for that. I was just going to get Goodwill to take them. Seems a little easier, don’t you think?”

For a moment, Eddie felt that idea snag somewhere in his brain. Maybe it _would_ be better. Could be something scary on those tapes. Best not to risk it.

Then he shook his head, both to clear it and to disagree with his baser instincts. If this was his birthday party, he wanted to see it.

Selfishly, he wanted to find some evidence that his mom had ever treated him like _more_ of a child than she did now, when he was eighteen and putting himself through college.

So he went out to the garage, and climbed over a bunch of rusty gardening shit, and unearthed the tiny TV set he could remember being sat on his dresser for a couple of years, back in Maine. The VHS player took a while longer to find, buried under a pile of old comic books and a couple of truly hideous shirts.

Hauling them up to his room and hooking them up without mom noticing took a while, but it was worth it to settle down on his tiny twin bed and watch the static switch over to fuzzy old camcorder footage.

_Five kids sit huddled around a campfire in the early afternoon, a gentle breeze blowing through the fall-tinted trees surrounding them. Eddie is sat in between a kid wearing a Donald Duck shirt and a kid with thick black glasses and the goofiest goddamn expression he’s ever seen._

_There are ingredients for s’mores scattered on the ground, and a bag of marshmallows being steadily demolished by a small boy with a pair of binoculars hanging around his neck._

_“Say hi to the camera, kids!” Comes a grownup’s voice, probably the cameraman, probably one of the other kids’ dad._

_Eddie waves shyly, ducking his head. His hair used to be_ so _curly. “Hi, Mister Tozier.”_

_Glasses-kid throws an arm around his shoulders and hugs him tightly, grinning toothily at the camera._

_“Th’s is Eddie Spaghetti,” says Glasses-kid. “We’re g’na be friends_ forever _!”_

_Eddie elbows the kid in the ribs, but he’s smiling, too. Smiling so wide it makes his face hurt._

Eddie sat back abruptly, blinking at the screen.

He was clutching the remote, he realised, thumb jabbing the pause button hard enough to crack the nail. The rough plastic edges dug into his palm, the battery panel pinching his skin.

Glasses-kid grinned at him through the TV screen, eyes crinkling at the corners. Eddie wondered who he was, why he couldn’t remember his name.

Why his heart was pounding.

“Dinner time, Eddie!” Mom shouted up the stairs.

Without thinking about it, Eddie pushed eject and crammed the VHS tape into his backpack.

When he got back to college in the new year, he put it in a box at the back of his wardrobe. And then he kept it through four apartments, a condo, and a split level.

He didn’t watch it again, though. Every time he thought about it, something else came up.

**1999**

It was fucking cold. _Too_ fucking cold, in fact, but that hadn’t stopped Eddie’s stats study group from dragging him out to goddamn Time Square on New Year’s Eve to get trampled to death by drunk tourists.

He was maybe overreacting a little.

“Just a little, bud,” said Stephen, before pinching his cheek. “C’mon, live a little! That stick up your ass needs a little holiday cheer.”

Eddie did _not_ know why he and Stephen were friends, but that hadn’t stopped the friendship from happening to him. Two years into undergrad they’d taken the same Gen Ed requirement — a semester on Romantic music — and ever since the guy had been stuck to him like glue.

Honestly, Eddie couldn’t figure out why he kept letting Stephen put him up to this shit, but it happened, and kept happening, and he found himself enjoying it every time.

It reminded him of someone, but he could never pin down exactly who. Some elementary school friend, maybe, who’d moved away after making him eat a bug or some gross first-grade shit like that.

“I do not need any holiday cheer,” Eddie bit back, tucking his scarf more tightly around his neck. “I _need_ Professor McLean to return my emails.”

“It’s New Year’s, man, stop bugging her so much,” said Stephen. He tugged Eddie’s arm, pulling them both through the crowds.

Eddie followed him, trying not to gaze too obviously up at the lights all around. It was still overwhelming, sometimes, just existing in New York. He’d grown up somewhere small and dull, pretty much devoid of interest. Once he’d had a goddamn rock fight rather than give into the boredom that followed him everywhere.

He couldn’t remember who else had been in the rock fight. Probably the head trauma.

So he really was trying hard to concentrate on where he was going, but when it came down to it, a beer on an empty stomach and several thousand people crushing together in a public space were always gonna add up to Eddie eating shit on the pavement.

His arm slipped out of Stephen’s grasp just in time to catch himself and avoid actual serious damage. His palms were scraped to shit when he checked, red droplets oozing out of a scar he didn’t remember having.

“Hey, man, you alright?”

Eddie didn’t look up. He would be absolutely fine without some asshole laughing at him for falling over. “Yeah, fine,” he muttered, pushing himself onto his knees.

“Just looked like you fell pretty hard,” the other guy replied, kneeling down next to him.

Eddie grimaced. “Don’t do that, man, you’re gonna get shit all over your knees.”

“I laugh in the face of dogshit,” he said. The guy had big square glasses and dark, messy hair, and he was so familiar for a second that Eddie almost asked if they knew each other. But then the feeling passed, and he was just a handsome guy in Times Square, one minute before midnight. A handsome guy with his hand outstretched, offering to pull Eddie up.

“So,” said Eddie, when they were both back on their feet. “Time’s ticking.”

The other guy looked confused.

Eddie rolled his eyes, and pointed upwards. “The new year, genius. You got anyone for the big moment? The new millennium, Y2K bug coming to kill us all, brave new world?”

“Oh,” said the guy. He shrugged, in a way which Eddie found completely unconvincing. “No, nothing like that. Just thought I’d come watch some city slicker eat shit on a Burger King wrapper.”

Around them, the crowd started counting down. It should’ve been louder, drowning out the conversation, but somehow Eddie could still hear everything.

“Fuck this millennium, anyway,” he said, as the count reached five. “All it gave me was a Zoloft prescription and adult onset eczema.”

“I hear that, bud,” said the other guy, just in time for the ball to drop.

The other guy was wearing a sport coat over a Hawaiian shirt with a lei, a fashion choice Eddie would’ve mocked on any other day. This time, though, he just twisted his fingers through the lei and tugged until he could reach the other guy’s mouth. He was irritatingly tall, and his shirt was an eyesore, and the skin at the back of his neck was weird and soft and Eddie was pretty sure he was never going to kiss anyone ever again, if they didn’t measure up to this fucking Time Square hobo with CVS glasses and too much cologne.

Other guy didn’t seem to mind either, if the way he gasped into Eddie’s mouth was any indication. His tongue got involved, which Eddie usually found _unspeakably_ disgusting but was, in this case, just kind of… warm, and not all that bad. His right hand was on Eddie’s hip, fingers slipping beneath the hem of his shirt, and his left was tangled in Eddie’s hair, just at the nape of his neck, palm flat and broad and supportive when he pushed Eddie back against a crash barrier to kiss him, somehow, _even more_.

His heart slammed against the inside of his ribs, hard enough it fucking _ached,_ and he only pulled back to breathe when he literally started seeing spots.

“Fuck,” said Eddie, eloquently.

“Not unless you buy me dinner first,” said the other guy. He looked shell shocked, and not in a good way. His eyes were kind of glazed over, his hands beset with tiny tremors that shook out up to his shoulders.

Eddie read once that ‘shell shocked’ as a term came from soldiers getting blown up so bad they went crazy. Apparently that wasn’t actually what happened, scientifically, but it had made a lot of sense to him at the time.

He was feeling a little crazy himself, come to think of it. He could swear he smelled some kind of rot in the air. His mom always told him what kind of things happened to boys like _that_

“I, uh,” said the other guy, after a second. He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder, eyes wide. “I have to go.”

And with that, he disappeared into the crowd, taking his stupid outfit — and Eddie’s self-respect — with him.

**2008**

Myra got him to agree to a honeymoon in Toronto with only minimal effort.

“It’s a lovely city, Eddie-bear,” she said reasonably, spreading out a sheaf of travel brochures like an ammo belt. “And I’ve always wanted to see the Leafs play in person, you know.”

“Of course,” he said, capitulating the way he had for a lot of the wedding planning process. He didn’t mind most of the choice she’d made, and in fact he really liked the cake, but he was finding it hard to engage with any of it the way he knew he should be.

So after the wedding and the reception — small, attended only by one of Eddie’s aunts on his side and Myra’s parents and brothers on hers — they’d got straight into Eddie’s company car and driven all the way up to Niagara, a road trip which Myra passed by reading a series of mass market paperback romances and Eddie by listening to talk radio with a kind of manic interest.

He remembered the NPR show about whale sound harmonics for a lot longer than he remembered what colour their wedding invitations had been.

Myra had found a small B&B on the US side of the border to stay for a night before crossing over, and somehow completely failed to tell Eddie that the entire goddamn place was chicken themed.

“This is insane,” he commented as he transferred a pile of carefully folded chinos into the dresser. “I feel like I’m being stalked by Foghorn Leghorn.”

“It’s _quaint_ ,” said Myra.

She didn’t sound angry, but Eddie got the feeling she was only half a second from stamping her foot.

They put away the rest of their clothes in silence. It wasn’t uncomfortable, exactly, but Eddie felt himself sigh with relief when Myra left for the TV room.

“PBS is showing Downton Abbey again,” she explained, on her way out the door. “I don’t want to miss it.”

So that would be at least two hours of peace, he thought guiltily.

He did like Myra, he was pretty sure of that. She could be funny, when she wanted to be, and she looked after him without complaining about how neurotic he could get over his health. Sometimes he even thought she looked beautiful, in the right light. But he knew that none of that was the way you were _meant_ to feel about your wife.

Putting those thoughts away for the night, he switched on the TV that sat unassumingly on the corner shelf. It was old enough that Eddie felt kind of nostalgic watching the white noise on the screen for the half second before the cable channels kicked in.

He settled back against the pillows on the bed and, after a few seconds of intense internal debate, hooked an arm around the stuffed rooster propped up beside him.

The TV was switched to CBS, showing a marathon of a sitcom Eddie had heard of but never actually watched. That was always the way, with newer shows. Myra only watched the dailies and Masterpiece Theatre, the kind of thing Eddie could happily switch his brain off for, offering only occasional insights into whatever the hell Poirot was doing this week.

But he _liked_ cheesy sitcoms, deep down in his heart. He’d watched all the family shows as a kid, hanging out at friend’s houses to avoid mom, soaking it all in like his friends had soaked in He Man or Transformers.

He’d liked those too, but mom had controlled his Saturday mornings far too strictly for him to get to watch them more than once or twice a month.

So when the opportunity arose, he liked to sit back on his couch and watch a few episodes of Friends, or MASH, or whatever else was on.

The sitcom was called Hu’s On First. It was, Eddie was pretty sure, a show about a guy trying to make it in comedy without any previous experience. Tuning in halfway through the episode didn’t help him in understanding what was going on, but it was funny enough that he sat through the three minutes of commercials before the next one without switching channels.

The next episode was less funny, Eddie thought — some kind of mistaken identity situation that was hard to follow when he could barely tell half the cast apart.

“You and me both, buddy,” he said, when some guy was complaining about that exact issue. He guessed it must be a running joke from the way the studio audience collapsed into laughter.

He kept watching. There had been a name in the guest credits he thought he recognised, although he couldn’t remember it now.

HU’S ON FIRST S1 E6 - THE DAY OF THE NIGHT OF THE DAY

INT. PHIL’S BEDROOM - DAY

Phil lies sleeping in bed, an unknown person beside him. He wakes up, rolls over, and —

PHIL

Aaaaaaah!

TAMARA

Oh, get over yourself.

PHIL

What… what happened?

INT. THE JOLLY ROGER - NIGHT

TITLE CARD: The day of the night of the day of the Incident

Tamara sips a beer at the bar. A guy, late 20s, kinda greasy, sidles up beside her.

RICHIE TOZIER

Hey, babe, you come here often? Or is that just me.

He winks. Tamara gives the guy a dirty look.

TAMARA

Beep beep, asshole.

Eddie blinked.

He wasn’t sure what to make of the sleazy guy. He seemed familiar, somehow, like maybe he’d seen him at a frat party, or in an Entertainment Weekly article. He itched for an internet connection so he could check IMDb for the guy’s credits, but the B&B didn’t boast Wi-Fi among its many chicken related charms.

Just looking at the shirt the guy was wearing made him want to cry, or yell, or possibly rip it off him. It was a confusing combination.

RICHIE

Aww, what’s that for? I’m just asking a question.

TAMARA

Yeah?

She runs a hand over his shoulder. The guy looks unnerved, but not uninterested. She leans in closer.

RICHIE

Do I get an answer yet? I’m nothing but ears right now.

He leans an elbow on the bar, landing straight in the nut bowl.

TAMARA

I’ll whisper it.

She leans in and whispers something. The guy’s eyes slowly get wider. This goes on for a good ten or fifteen seconds, until the guy is about ready to pop.

RICHIE

And then?

TAMARA

And then, my boyfriend kicks your head in.

The guy sighs wistfully.

RICHIE

Not my first rodeo, partner.

Tamara returns to the booth with Phil, Kim and Reuben.

REUBEN

Wow, what’d you say to the guy?

TAMARA

Nothing that would hold up in court.

It cut to commercial there, about five minutes in.

Eddie wondered idly if he was meant to find the guy getting beat up funny, or the fact the guy might have liked it. Either way it didn’t exactly tickle him.

He kept watching the show, though. Just in case the guy turned up again, after that one scene.

Myra reappeared when he was on his fifth episode. The guy was just a guest star, as it turned out. Some kind of stand-up, if the last scene of the episode had been anything to go by.

The delivery had been good, but the material was all bullshit.

“What’s this?” She asked, brushing her hair viciously.

“Oh, nothing,” said Eddie. He glanced away from the screen. “Can’t remember the name, actually. You can put something else on.”

He had a pretty awful dream that night. When he woke up, gasping and tangled in the comforter, Myra just snored a little louder and rolled onto her stomach.

The rest of the honeymoon, Eddie only watched whatever Myra put on. It was easier that way.

**2015**

The joint Netflix account got a lot of use the first summer Myra suggested they sleep in separate beds.

“It’s the dreams, honey,” she said, wearily. “I’m so happy you’re in therapy, but I’m worried about what disturbed sleep will do for my mental health in the long run. We need one — uh. One awake person in this house.”

_One sane person_ was clearly what she was about to say. Eddie didn’t blame her. He didn’t feel that sane a lot of the time, waking up from barely remembered dreams of drowning to find her awake and staring at him in the washed out glow of the alarm clock.

So he started sleeping in the guest room, and watched a lot of crap on Netflix.

It was easier than thinking about his other options.

He started out with nature documentaries, which he thought should’ve been a lot more soothing than they actually were. It only took about a week to run through everything, though, after learning a hell of a lot more about meerkats than anyone should ever have to, and then the cooking shows took another week, and eventually only the comedy section was left standing between Eddie and oblivion.

So he started watching stand-up.

He’d never really been into it before, even when he was at NYU and actually had time to go out to bars and watching up-and-comers test out their material on the unsuspecting masses. It just seemed so horrific to go up on stage and let people laugh at you that Eddie cringed out of his own skin thinking about it.

And it didn’t help that most of it was unfunny garbage.

Myra left him dinner in the oven every Friday, enough that he could eke it out all weekend if he really needed to. She’d started spending almost every weekend with a series of “friends”, the kind of friends she mentioned to Eddie in the kind of vague tone he recognised from conversations he’d had with mom about his “friends” in college.

Mom had a lot of opinions about that kind of thing, right up until the day she died. He’d gone to visit her just before it happened, and she spent the whole time making him promise, over and over, that he’d never do anything that would tarnish her memory.

He didn’t know that he could tarnish it any more than she’d already managed to herself, but he said the words anyway. Couldn’t hurt.

The point was that he could spend Friday evening watching Netflix for a solid couple of hours after getting back from work, a warm bowl of something edible on his lap, and forget about the world.

It was a couple weeks before Richie Tozier’s first special came up on autoplay. It was an old one, old enough that it only streamed in SD and the lighting made Tozier look like a literal ghoul.

“My mom told me once,” said Tozier, microphone a little too close to his mouth. “She told me, Richie, there’s only two things a young boy needs to learn in this world. How to do his taxes, and how to hide the body.”

He paused. “Of course, my grandpa was a serial killer. I think she got a couple of mixed messages, y’know?”

The audience cackled. Eddie didn’t see what was so funny, but he kept watching anyway, long enough that his next special autoplayed.

Tozier was older here, wearing a suit jacket over a graphic t-shirt and jeans. He had one foot up on a stool, at one point, jeans stretched tight over his thigh. Eddie’s throat went dry.

“My girlfriend caught me on Pornhub the other week,” he said. “I told her, honey, it’s not what you think! She said, oh yeah? I said, yeah, it’s research. Research for what? she asks.”

Tozier paused, leaning closer to the audience.

“For when your sister comes to visit.”

The audience went wild. Eddie watched Tozier’s face. His jaw clenched tightly, a muscle jumping in his neck.

He clicked the home button and put on an old episode of Good Eats. It helped get rid of the sour taste in his mouth.


	2. Chapter 2

2020

“Eddie my love, if you don’t put on your fucking shoes in the next five minutes I’m leaving the country.”

“We’re leaving the country _anyway_ ,” Eddie groused, head still buried in the coat closet. “I can’t believe you left your stupid keys in your stupid winter coat. Idiot.”

“Wow,” said Richie, leaning forward until he was pressed flush against Eddie’s back. “Anyone would think you don’t like me, Eds.” Eddie soaked in the body heat for a second before elbowing him in the side.

Richie yelped.

“Don’t use your self-esteem issues to avoid the issue of your stupid fucking coat,” Eddie grumbled, finally managing to grasp the keys from the _lining_ of that same coat. Richie liked having holes in his pockets because they let him keep more of his arms warm in the winter.

Eddie wasn’t allowed to give his opinion on that anymore. The group chat had been a wasteland.

“Just gimme the coat, I’ll fish ‘em out on the way out,” said Richie, reasonably. “And you can put on your goddamn shoes so we can make it to the airport before the heat death of the universe.” Just as he said it Eddie lost his grip on the keyring, hearing the malicious jingle as they fell back inside the coat.

With a growl of frustration, he yanked the coat off the hanger and held it out to Richie without turning around. His shoulder complained at the angle, the scar on his chest pulled tight, but he was just pissed off enough to ignore it. 

“Thanks, babe,” said Richie. Eddie felt him brush a kiss against the nape of his neck, which made his blisteringly bad mood seem just a little ridiculous in the circumstances. “Bev and Ben would forgive us if we missed their wedding to fuck in the coat closet, right? Right?”

“Literally not in a million years,” said Eddie. He stood up, hands pushing against his knees, and turned to face Richie, neck bent back just slightly. Somehow he hadn’t expected Richie would get quite so fucking tall — he didn’t get his last growth spurt until after Eddie left for college, still hovering just shy of 5’10” at high school graduation. 

It was still dizzying getting to see him, sometimes, and remember that they really had found each other again. That they were the same people as those dumbass little kids who spent every recess playing kickball and digging for worms. He put a hand on Richie’s chest, just over his heart, and felt the warmth through the neon-pineapple patterned linen.

Richie was smiling at him, the soft kind of smile he’d forgotten you were meant to get from someone who loved you. Myra used to smile at him, most of the time, in a way which implied there was something she needed on a high shelf and he was the best option she could find. He was still surprised she hadn’t made the stepladder an issue in the divorce settlement.

“I love you”, said Eddie, because he did. Then he looked at the coat hanging loose in Richie’s hand, and scowled. “Now get your damn keys so we can blow this popsicle stand.”

“Alright, alright, Eds,” said Richie. He pushed one hand into the left hand pocket and kept pushing until Eddie could make out the shape of his fingers at the hem. He heard the keys jingle.

He rolled his eyes. “Thank you for your co-operation.”

Richie’s eyes lit up. “Oh man, remember watching that at Bill’s house? You screamed at me for shoving my foot in your face just when Robocop’s arm fell off.”

“His arm did not _fall off_ it got shot full of fucking holes! And I happened to be enjoying the movie, asshole, it’s not my fault you were put on this planet to annoy the shit out of me.”

“Sure was,” said Richie. He leaned in a few inches to brush his lips against Eddie’s forehead. “You ain’t getting rid of me again, Kaspbrak. Already used up all your vacation time courtesy of the clown.”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “I guess you’re a little less annoying now. Just a little.”

“You can say it’s my explosive sexual charisma,” said Richie. He thrust his hips a little, like he thought maybe Eddie hadn’t understood the joke. Or maybe, more likely, like he knew Eddie would hate it so, so much. “I know that’s all that’s keeping us together.”

“That and your sweet style,” said Eddie. He closed his eyes for a second, checked his watch, and finally slipped his feet into his loafers. “Let’s go, Rich. Canada waits for no man.”

“Can’t wait to ride a barrel over the falls with you,” said Richie, tailing Eddie out the front door and leaning against the wall as Eddie double checked the lock. “It’ll be totally romantic when we break all our bones against the rocks.”

“At what point did I agree to be _in_ the barrel with you, dumbass?” Eddie asked, as they slid into the car from opposite doors. 

Richie smiled at him as he put the key in the ignition. “I guess you didn’t. Maybe we’ll just have to watch the barrel from the riverbank. Might get some splinters, really feel alive.”

Eddie rolled his eyes and tried to hide the smile spreading across his face. He figured Richie might have figured out that Eddie felt more alive with him than he had in a long, long time; that didn’t mean he had to _say_ shit about it. 

“Sounds like a plan,” he said, eventually. The radio was turned to some oldies station; he reached for the dial. “You mind if I change this?”

Richie smiled again, glancing across the gearbox. “Do what you want, Eds. I’ll survive somehow.”

They were getting good at that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've been staring at this for a month and i just need it out of my google drive before i go insane

**Author's Note:**

> yes, i finally succumbed to clown movey! the second chapter is set post-movie and will involve gay domesticity and minimal angst, because these terrible middle aged men deserve some peace and happiness.
> 
> title from pink rabbits by the national
> 
> find me on twitter/tumblr @dotsayers! i literally don't have an online identity i am like the chameleon of interests


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